“This is theatre at its most powerful. With this week’s poisoning in Russia of the Russian-Canadian performer, Pyotr Verzilov, and with this play, we see the power of the arts, the crucial need for the arts in Canada and around the world.” —Lorraine Graves

Thank you to Kathleen Oliver and the Georgia Straight for this inspiring recap of the night! The JAPANESE PROBLEM team was thrilled to take home the Critics' Choice Innovation award along with Mind of a Snail’s Multiple Organism!

Accepting one of two Critics’ Choice Innovation Awards (the other went to Mind of a Snail’s Multiple Organism) with Yoshié Bancroft for Universal Limited’s Japanese Problem, Joanna Garfinkel echoed that sentiment: “We wanted to change the stories that were told, who was in them, and who told them.” --read the full article here!

We are excited to announce that JAPANESE PROBLEM was nominated for Significant Artistic Achievement and the Critic's Choice Innovation Award.

Heartfelt thanks to all those who helped make our run at Hastings Park a success: our collaborators, designers, community partners, supporters, and audience members--we could not have done it without you!

Thank you to The Westender and Jo Ledingham for including us in their 2017 list!

Not a week went by in 2017 without something wonderful happening on a Vancouver stage. From the Goldcorp Stage to The Fishbowl, under the Bard tents or under the Cambie Bridge, there was seemingly a show on for every taste.

With that, here are some productions – not necessarily the best – that creatively pushed the boundaries of live theatre this year.

Image from The Héritage project --a 10-year initiative to digitize and make accessible online some of Canada’s most popular archival collections encompassing roughly 40 million pages of primary-source documents. Chronicling the country and its people from the 1600s to the mid-1900s, this collection represents a vast and unique resource for Canadian historians, students, and genealogists.

The title ‘JAPANESE PROBLEM‘ was a zeitgeist term used around the Second World War. There were countless papers and articles published in North American addressing the so-called “Japanese problem,” often perpetuating false information about those who were detained.

If you missed JAPANESE PROBLEM at Hastings Park, please join us at the Nikkei National Museum in Burnaby for the fall exhibit Hastings Park 1942 -- where a filmed version of JAPANESE PROBLEM will be projected hourly.

THERE'S A LOT PACKED INTO THIS SHORT PLAY, BUT ITS GREATEST IMPACT COMES FORM BEING INVITED TO BEAR WITNESS IN THE PHYSICAL SPACE WHERE THE EVENTS DESCRIBED ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE 75 YEARS AGO. THIS IS SITE-SPECIFIC THEATRE AT ITS MOST POWERFUL. -Kathleen Oliver